In the preparation of nutritious wet baby food formulations, it is necessary to incorporate a thickening agent such as starch to obtain a product attractive to the consumer. Naturally occurring starches suffer from various shortcomings when employed in such formulations. For example, unmodified tapioca starch forms a very stringy, cohesive paste when gelatinized in water. Therefore, in conventional practice, various of the grain and root starches that have been chemically modified have been utilized in such products. Such chemical modification usually involves cross-linking with, for example, phosphorous oxychloride, epichlorohydrin, acrolein, divinyl-sulfone, di-epoxy reagents, aldehydes, glycidaldehyde, thermosetting resins or their monomers, etc.
While such chemical modifications change the paste character of starches, and give the starch paste a desirable texture, such cross-linking agents suffer from the disadvantage of being classified as toxic materials. Thus, when they are used in preparation of food starches, great care must be taken to insure that toxic residual reagents or side reaction products do not remain in the food starch. In addition, certain chemically modified starches have been criticized for their lack of digestibility in infant foods. Therefore, the attainment of similar starch attributes without relying upon chemical modification of starch would be especially advantageous.